Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Monday February 19, 2007 @10:17AM
from the sounds-like-fun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Following in the footsteps of Psycle, VioLet Composer is a completely GPLed music composer for Windows that has slowly but surely been gaining attention. In an interview at Laptoprockers the author covers not only the program itself but the his reasoning behind choosing to open the source using the GPL."

It looks like a tracker + programmable sound sources and drag&drop signal paths. An successor to Buzz in other words. It's neat, but pretty crude. It reminds me of the first versions of Protracker for some reason. It's ungodly slow though, the default song only plays with 500ms latency, any lower and it chops up. This on a machine where I'm used to the usual 4-8ms with piles of sounds... is this just on my machine?

Writing code for the sound sources directly is a cool thing, but kind of difficult to de

Hi, I'm the developer. Can I ask what hardware you're running? VC runs pretty nice on my 3800+ X2, but I'm not sure what sort of hardware it *won't* work on. Well, I do know it doesn't work on a Celery 650 with 64 megs of RAM running ME, but that isn't really surprising.:-D

It's an Athlon XP 2400+, which is definitely on the slower side compared to todays monsters. But now when I tried it, it almost works with 100ms, just an occasional chop. Not sure what changed in between here. In any case, a recent song I made used 4 VSTs and 40 effects layered on top without chopping on a 22ms buffer, so there's lots of room for optimisation.

Another thing: is there a way to play around with the instruments/machines without editing a pattern? It's a bit hard to just play some stuff on the k

Thanks for replying. It's important to note that VC does a *lot* more to produce sound than the average VST host, and I know it doesn't sound impressive yet but one day it will do a lot more. There is room for optimisation but VC will never perform as well as a plain PCM processing program.
I admit the playing around bit is not easy in VC right now. The sample playing thing is being examined, but there are some major technical hurdles to injecting data into the mixing desk without having a machine to do it

Basically a not as pretty version of "Reason"
This thing looks cool, but it's nothing like Reason [propellerheads.se]. Reason is much more focused on emulating the experience of hardware. This thing lets you write your own synth as a text file!

FOSS project for Windows written in C#.Sometimes I think there's a ploy from MS to "taint" the FOSS community by writing "free" code tied to a de-facto closed platform.I have a feeling this thing doesn't run with Mono. Even if it runs, it's aways on a platofrm _tolerated_ by MS before it gains widespread use, and then sue or menace to (as we've seen soooo many times).

I can assure you I've got nothing to do with MS, in fact I hate everything about them *except* C# and their free development environments. To be clear though, the only thing that doesn't work in C# under Linux is Windows.Forms, MS's windowing library, which only an idiot would expect to find a Linux version of. I mean, they're evil and all that, but to give away the core of your OS as part of a free and open language specification would be commercial suicide, and they're not stupid.If you are serious about

This guarantees that in the future it will *always* be possible for *anyone* to pick up from some point in VC development and continue it or to make their own flavour of it. The GPL also guarantees that VC will always be available for free, even if I or someone else decides to make a commercial derivative later on.

The day the source code to Buzz got lost was a very sad day and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do. We'd just had an updated version of Buzz released and suddenly everyone realised there would *never* be another one. By publishing not just the application but also all of the files that go together to make it, I'm making sure this can't happen to my little corner of the scene again.

"Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies." - Linus Torvalds

If this is program which allows you to do composition, and he's not providing any way of doing anything explicitly with copyrighted works, then hopefully he won't run afoul of the *AA's. (ie. this sounds as if it has "significant, non-infringing uses" and is hopefully safe from such things.)

I mean, you can still buy a guitar or a piano even though you could play music which is copyrighted. I can't see how this would be potentially any mo

Gentlemen, we must find a way to plug the analog instrument hole. Only pre-approved instruments with prerecorded and approved music will be sold. With our new patented `like-playing' technology, customers can feel like they're actually playing. Any fair-licensed author-play instruments detecting the play of copyrighted works will immediately call home to beat those pirates and keep sales cost low!

Even better, if it detects a series of copyrighted notes being played by the user, it automatically charges them the appropriate liscensing fee. So now they can fiddle around, secure in the knowledge that they are legal!

Why yes Trackers lend themselves to sample based music which is great for games - especially where storage or processing power might be at a minimum.

I have written many pieces of music using tracker software that you would be hard-pushed to tell what sequencer I used.
In addition trackers heritage actually lies in the old "Steptime" hardware sequencers used by the likes of Kraftwerk and other electro luminaries - modern trackers are way more advanced though these days!

So before you make comments like that make sure you know your history, In many ways we owe their heritage to many of the sequencers we have today.

Hm. Naming problem. Colloquially they're called 'module trackers' or 'midi/music sequencers', but essentially they're both the same thing: a program that places hardware/user-defined notes in user-designed spots in songs. To the talented, they are a good as a room full of fine musical instruments. To the less talented, they're much like a cat with a tether attached to its tail, labeled 'swing me'.There are also 'sound editors', like Sound Forge, that allow you to mess with the raw sound data, and Cakewa

I think you're looking for ProTools [digidesign.com]. It does pretty much what you say. It is, however, quite expensive and needs specialized hardware to be used to the full extent. Hence the Pro part of the name. I don't know if it natively works on a note by note basis, I think conceptually it's more of a software based multi-track recorder. It does, however, have plug-ins that allow for such thing as locking pitch/etc. You know, all the effects used on pop-divas to make them actually sound bearable.

See my sibling post to yours. ProTools is not 'inherently' about manipulating audio on a note-by-note basis, in the manner described by the GP -- although it is favoured within the industry because the interface allows you to work with your audio recordings in that kind of way quite quickly and easily, from the arrange page.

Conceptually, it's probably best described a DAW [wikipedia.org], though I'll grant you "multi-track recorder" is a pretty close approximation for all intents and purposes;-)

As a Cubase user, I can vouch for this. I love Steinberg's products,and thankfully they don't have asinine policies like forcing you touse only a certain specific brand of hardware, like Digidesign does.

For the record, your choice of interface is only restricted on the LE systems. When you move to HD, you do have a small, but high quality set of choices. I don't see the LE situation as any different than the OSX / Mac situation. Their motivation is probably the same as well.

I think the most significant advantage of HD systems these days is expandability, low-or-no-latency, and delay compensation. PowerCore is similar in terms of offloading processing, but is not really the same experience as an HD system. That said, I know there are quite a few HD users that also have a PowerCore because of some PowerCore-specific plugins that people like. They do suffer from having added latency as a result.Supposedly Nuendo has delay compensation as well, but I have various reports on how

If you've got a ProTools HD rig then I'm obviously not telling you anything you don't already know, but for the benefit of anybody else...

Plugin Delay Compensation basically means offsetting tracks to adjust for how long the DSP's in your chain take. So, for a very crude example, if you've got a piano going through a cheapo EQ which adds no delay, and a guitar going through a demanding convolution plugin which adds 1ms of delay, without PDC, your guitar is going

I agree fully that you can pretty much get the job done on just about any platform hardware/software combo. I disagree about the latency issue to some extent. As far as I know, most of the solutions involve some sort of low latency mode or monitoring without effects, where with an HD system, there is generally no issue, and the latency is normally measured in samples, not ms. I don't base this on any recent personal experience however. Mostly just anecdotal evidence, as it always seems to be one of the

I've worked with ProTools and I even with the specialized hardware, there is no "easy button" that allows you to make hit music from crap musicians. You still have to have talented composers, musicians and vocalists as well as a decent audio engineer/producer who has musical skill to make it all work together. Pitch locking isn't just some simple effect you run to straighten out someone's off key vocals. If they can't carry a tune, pitch locking isn't going to help in the least. So, hate it if you must,

This is not entirely on point. Since it's a rare day on slashdot where I actually halfway know what I'm talking about, I can't resist pitching in:)

Hm. Naming problem. Colloquially they're called 'module trackers' or 'midi/music sequencers', but essentially they're both the same thing: a program that places hardware/user-defined notes in user-designed spots in songs.

Although at the most simplified level I suppose this is correct, they're not really the same thing at the level beyond that.
Trackers are step-time. Commonly, each step equates to sixteenth notes (four steps per beat of the bar). Modern trackers may allow you to choose greater resolution, but in the past (and by "past" I'm talking turn of the century here, which was when I used them, not decades ago!) it was pretty common to simply work at double-bpm if you needed more resolution.
On the other hand, midi sequencers... well... clearly I can't claim they're continuous, as that's obviously a theoretical impossibility in a digital system. But they don't come across as step like. Resolution-wise, even at the same sort of period ('99), Cubase had an internal MIDI resolution of 15360 [harmony-central.com] PPQN (pulses per quarter note). Most decent DAWs these days (Pro tools, Nuendo) will allow you to spot events to sample accuracy (ie, if you're working at cd quality, you've got a resolution of 44,100 per second) or locked to various types of timecode (for, eg, film scoring). Against, while it's possible modern trackers incorporate this (I haven't really used them for a few years), I would certainly say that older trackers (FT2, IT2, Modplug-as-I-knew-it, Buzz) do not allow you to put your notes on spots as defined by (eg) SMPTE timecode.
Also, the "note" in a trackers was traditionally triggering a sample loaded directly within the tracker software, whereas the notes in a midi sequencer drive hardware, or a software sampler/synth/instrument (the most common format being VSTi). Admittedly, these days many/most trackers can output midi and use software instruments too, so I admit the definition is pretty thoroughly blurred.
Still, it helps to realise the different backgrounds they've come from, because whilst it's blurred, you still can't really see them as identical.

To the talented, they are a good as a room full of fine musical instruments. To the less talented, they're much like a cat with a tether attached to its tail, labeled 'swing me'.

True!

There are also 'sound editors', like Sound Forge, that allow you to mess with the raw sound data, and Cakewalk and Audacity, which are excellent 'multitrack recorders' with SF-like functionality built in (Cakewalk's a MUCH better program, but as for Audacity, 'free' is a good selling point).

Cakewalk these days is known as Sonar. But even with the old Cakewalk branded versions, considering it a multitrack soundforge would be doing it a bit of a disservice. Like Cubase and Logic, it's essentially a hybrid DAW/Midi sequencer.

None of these could be considered 'music editors', which to me implies something that can take in raw PCM data and let you select out and remove, add, and modify notes. No such program exists to my knowledge.

Well, no, not really, because it's barely possible for computers to pull apart PCM data in that way... In fact as little as five years ago I'd have said impossible, but we are getting there. The closest there currently is would be melodyne [celemony.com]. I haven't used it (because it's bloody expensive!) but reviews I've read suggest you can pretty much treat audio as midi - ie, select and alter individual notes from an audio file. Even then, it will struggle or outright fail if the source material is (eg) heavily effected with delays/reverbs/etc. And while it's ok for monophonic audio, you're not going to be able to (say) change the flute line from the midst of an orchestral recording.

So in other words you agree with me when I am saying that we owe a lot of the advances in music technology to that which came before it.I too have been making music since the late 80's and have a collection of analogue synths and drum machines. Although I owe much of my roots to humble beginnings on Ubix music and Octamed on the Amiga. Those early trackers greatly influenced me as a musician and I often go back to them because in many ways the limitations actually spurn creativity. So I find it interesting

Is this why in 20 years I have never seen a tracker used on a commercial session? Alternatively this could be because bedroom studio techno-heads don't hire studios?

Well, it's the latter really. Plenty of commercially released and successful dance music (<pet-peeve> no, not all dance music is "techno", any more than all music made by bands with guitars is, say, "punk" </pet-peeve>) has been made with trackers - including many considered classics in their respective styles.

Not some but MOST of the most beautiful music I know was written by MOD trackers. The free software and openness of the various MOD formats really captured the imagination of composer hobbyists over the last 15-odd years.

MOD is a testament to all that is possible in a society free of copyright, closed IP, and DRM. MODs convinced me long ago that as soon as music is broadcast publicly it is public domain.

Thanks for the link!! Vsnares is one of my all time favourite producers, and he uses tons of open source music tools (open source music, not tools) in his repertoire. I can't remember which MOD tracker is his favourite, but it's an old school 8 or 16 channel one.

I used to listen to MODs right in the tracker or with the DMP player which showed the hexadecimal "code". I used to track S3M, XM, MOD, and MDL (from Digitrakker) back in the mid 90's. Here's my discography, if you care. Mind the "web design".

Since you have some experience, could you please recommend an F/OSS MIDI sequencer? I'd like to do some work on my Yamaha Clavinova, but I'm having a hard time finding a decent sequencer that works under Kubuntu (Edgy) and/or XP.

Since you have some experience, could you please recommend an F/OSS MIDI sequencer? I'd like to do some work on my Yamaha Clavinova, but I'm having a hard time finding a decent sequencer that works under Kubuntu (Edgy) and/or XP.

Yes I've been planning to get Rosegarden for a long time - it does look spectacular. Does anybody else recommend it? Also can anybody tell me if it will work (through Linux) with a Yamaha keyboard? (PSR-550 to be exact) The keyboard required its own driver under Windows, does Linux have some generic MIDI keyboard driver or am I screwed?

Well, it surely has standard Midi In / Midi Out connectors? If so you should be able to connect it to a standard MIDI interface (available from 20 upwards) or even to a bulk sound card with MIDI/Gameport connector using a special cable.

So recording MIDI from the keyboard or sending MIDI to the keyboard (to have the notes played back with the keyboard's synthesizer / sampler) shouldn't be the problem. Only thing you might need the windows drivers for is if it supports loading samples from the computer into

Standard MIDI interfaces are slowly dying out, since the USB specification includes a MIDI device class [usb.org]. Any device implementing the MIDI profile can be used with any operating system that supports it. This works beautifully on OS X (as you'd expect, since most MIDI users went the Atari ST to Mac route and ignored the PC). Support is under development for Linux, but I don't know what the current status is.

Yeah it has a standard (I assume) MIDI-to-serial cable. So it should work. I don't know what the Windows drivers are for since it doesn't upload samples to the computer. But in Windows IIRC the drivers were needed to get MIDI programs to recognise it (but perhaps I could have installed a generic driver).

Pity my newer computers don't have serial so I can't try it out without digging up the oldies.

I was confused at first. How could anyone possibly use "music" and "oss" in the same sentence? That means they don't know jack! Then it dawned on me that they weren't talking about the old Open Sound System for Linux...:-)

OK, I'm a Linux user (geek, dork, whatever), but bias aside, there's a lot to said for Open Source and Free software. Right now many of the tools may not be as good as commercial counterparts (though many are better). But the powerful thing about OSS is that it tends to get better. Sometimes improvements are slow and dependent upon a particular developer, but more often there's rapid change. The music software right may not have all the needed features of a pro or semi-pro package, but it may be just "good enough" for a lot of folks. In a few months it becomes "good enough" for a few more. At some point it crosses a threshold where it's not only good enough but something of a standard.

Take OpenOffice for example. MS Office power users will miss some features, but the vast majority of students and home users can now use it for all their tasks.

The same can easily be said of closed source. Or are you trying to tell me that Adobe Photoshop has always remained the same and that this is the side effect of closed source?

Except for an unrelated point about OpenOffice being "good enough", I never implied that closed source, proprietary software is not improving. Are you trying to tell me that Canada is evil? It makes as much relevance as your post. The obvious difference is that OSS can be downloaded and used without cost. Of course, OSS helps drive the

Then why the constant need to scream open source anytime you had the chance? If you really felt that there was no difference between the closed source and open source model you'd have little if anything left to your original post. It would be like talking about food and saying "vegetarian" as often as possible and claiming that I meant for it to mean nothing in difference to non-vegetarian food.

Take OpenOffice for example. MS Office power users will miss some features, but the vast majority of students and home users can now use it for all their tasks.

I've often pondered the subject of open source in very specialized, relatively niche software like audio. It seems that, for obvious reasons, open source development works the best in areas where there is strong general public interest and as such more people interested in helping develop the software. OpenOffice seems to be a good example of an app,

However for audio the situation is a lot different I think. There are many remarkable open source audio software projects that I don't want to discount in any way, but on the other hand I'm also a working as a composer for a living in film, TV and video games both in Hollywood and in my native Finland, and I can pretty much say that in 99% of the cases the professional composers are sequencing with Logic Pro (OS X), Digital Performer (OS X), Pro Tools (OS X + Windows), Cubase (OS X + Windows) or Sonar (Wind

Take OpenOffice for example. MS Office power users will miss some features, but the vast majority of students and home users can now use it for all their tasks.That isn't really a good example. All OpenOffice does is attempt to copy MS Office, and it does it rather poorly. It is slow and bloated, and still doesn't have the entire feature set. It is lagging a few versions behind, and the.doc support isn't perfect. There is no reason anyone would want to switch (on Windows), besides cost.

Take OpenOffice for example. MS Office power users will miss some features, but the vast majority of students and home users can now use it for all their tasks.

That isn't really a good example. All OpenOffice does is attempt to copy MS Office, and it does it rather poorly. It is slow and bloated, and still doesn't have the entire feature set. It is lagging a few versions behind, and the.doc support isn't perfect. There is no reason anyone would want to switch (on Windows), besides cos

Though I work as a web developer right now, I have a long past of involvement with music. I will definitely start back up with it at one point or another. I'm sure when I do, stuff like this will be really useful. My hats off to the developers on this project. I'll definitely check it out when the linked page is no longer dead.

I have been keeping an eye out for a digital music workstation app that fits in between GarageBand and Logic, and runs on one of the BSDs or Linux. This is promising but doesn't appear to be there yet. IMO it appears in the screenshots to be a little heavy on the geek factor. For composition or improvisation you expect to see a timeline horizontally, and a stack of instrument voices vertically, and some kind of panel or pane in the UI , a library from which to choose instruments.

For composition or improvisation you expect to see a timeline horizontally.

For a Logic Pro / GarageBand / Cubase clone, you're right that's exactly what you need. The site for this thing is slashdotted, so I can't look at it, but I hope it's something different. (Having said that, plenty of people would like an OSS Logic clone).

I've only dabbled in music software (Cubase ages ago, GarageBand more recently) and the convention you describe doesn't really gel with me. It just seems to linear. What I'd *like* to do would have multi-instrument phrases which you could manipulate in an

This isn't attempting to be an alternative to GarageBand or Logic. It's coming from a different ethos of music altogether. It's "family tree" consists of the likes of Octamed / Fasttracker / Buzz / Renoise, not Cubase / Logic. See my post here [slashdot.org] for a fuller explanation.

From what I've picked up reading slashdot and many music production forums, the closest OSS to what you're looking for is Rosegarden. I haven't tried it myself though - no point really, as I'm happily (yes, really) running XP (no, it doe

Honestly, i did not expect the VC project to outlive so many other clonez, keep that good luck going! Kudos btw for leaving that gloryfied macro assembler (c++) behind, looks like quite some pioneering work that you do.

Some free end-user feedback for you guys ('cause I know you're reading). I'm running this under Windows 2003.

On the config dialog:
- Why don't you read the default sound card selection off of the "Control Panel"? (Audio panel)
- What's up with the "(fix bad sound)" labels? (Audio panel)
- Why do I only have "Desktop" or "MyDocs" as choices for "Recording Directory". (I'd like "D:\Music".) (Audio panel)
- Don't put the "HELP" button in red text. It's 2007 - if people need help, they'll know to look for a help button or just as likely, hit the web. (Same thing for the doc; if you think you have to write the text in red to get people to understand it, it's probably because the doc wasn't that clear in black.)

Next screen:
- What's up with the "Learn about stuff!" titlebar?
- No, it's not true that "You've Upgraded!". I just installed the software for the first time.
- Why is the "show next startup" box checked by default? I don't know any other software program that shows me the release notes with each launch. (Especially when I'm supposed to be relaunching the program several times to check audio settings.)

The actual program:
- Don't bug me with the "Violet needs testers and developers" prompt. WTF do you think I'm doing?
- OK, I loaded a sample. Where's the "play sample" button? (Also, why not tie the sample to the "keyboard" at this point so I can see which pitch I want to play the sample at.)
- Why don't you start with at least one track in a new pattern?

Looks like a good start. I'll try to write something in it over the weekend. (I should also tell you that my favorite tracker is something called "OctaMed" so you know where I'm coming from.)

...there is also a cross-platform Buzz-port titled Aldrin which is actually comparable if not more mature than this software. It has already a majority of Buzz objects ported over and has gained some momentum among the Buzz community. And yes, it does run on Linux...

What makes violet Composer so special? There is already a lot of free or even open source software, that allows hobby musicians to have (nearly) as many possibilities as professional musicians.Jeskola Buzz has been around for a while (it is free but unfortunately not open source... well, the developer lost the source anyway). There is a very vivid community around it (see for example http://www.buzzmusic.de/ [buzzmusic.de]) and many people have already created a lot of nice music with it. Now there are even efforts make o

As much as I 3 FOSS, I had to install the VST dssi wrapper and install some Windows commercial plugins. I have always found that pretty much every single OSS audio synth/fx unit just doesn't sound half as nice as the commerical ones:-(

Finale (and Sibelius) are essentially for "composing" scores (ie, traditional notated sheet music to print out and put in front of musicians).

I am interested to know what universe you live in where "music" isn't "music" unless sheet music is involved. I mean, whilst the "if it's made electronically and not played on 'real' instruments, it doesn't count as music" attitude is utterly ridiculous, it's at least... almost... nearly... sort of... possibly... barely... understandable.

Lilypond is the OSS music notation software, and has been around for a long time. It's code-based, and I guess it's closer to Score than to Finale or Sibelius. But it produces pretty impressive stuff once you wrangle with it enough. There are some GUIs for Lilypond, including a Win32 plugin for jEdit, but I've never used them.
Lilypond, the gnu project music typesetter [lilypond.org].

Thank you! I switched to Lilypond several months ago and never looked back. It is so much more flexible than Finale and its ilk due to the fact that it isn't constrained by a graphical representation. I also find that writing music in text is a lot faster than point-and-click or even recording and going back to adjust all of the quantizing problems.

I love the ability to use music variables to hold repeating sequences. I love the programmability (even better with the new streams model). It's extremely

As much as I think OSS is cool adn all, I still haven't found any OSS that comes close to matching the features, speed, and/or ease of use of the commercial applications I use like Pro Tools, Sound Forge, Reason, Live, Vegas, etc. I have tried pretty well every app I could find and they were either lacking in features or the UI was so unruly that it would take months to be comfortable enough to work at a decent pace. For applications like this OSS programmers/designers are really going to have to work hard

People have already mentioned Rosegarden, Ardour, etc as alternatives to commercial apps, like Logic Pro, Cubase, Reason, etc, but I should also mention that there are several distributions, such as Ubuntu Studio (mentioned previously on/.) and Demudi (the inspiration for the former) that are specifically built around supporting these apps. Personally, I think it's all a lot more flexible than the commercial apps, despite being harder to use.In any case, it's a pity that Violet isn't available for Linux u

Please explain how the OSS apps you mentioned are more flexible than say Pro Tools, Vegas or Sonar? The OSS apps are missing support for some sound cards, file types, and other things like ReWire, etc. Sure, you could prgram your own features in, but that is fraction of the percentage of the market for apps like that. So, in the end they are harder to use and have less to offer. Not really a good choice in my opinion.

Damn it Slashdot, now I am going to need to find a zip drive to pull my old samples off to fill the sample library. I like how you are able to see the code that the effect modules or "Machine" (this with the binary installer too). So good job, I had some fun. It even sounds better than rebirth (don't ask it was a long time ago).